BlockBeats reported on July 16 that Warren Buffett, in a recent interview, commented on the market backdrop, technology investments and Federal Reserve leadership.
Buffett says speculation is making value harder to find
Buffett said the current market is increasingly driven by speculative trading rather than long-term investment principles. “When everybody is more interested in gambling, it gets very hard to find anything of value.”
He said he had earlier this year described the stock market as a church with a casino attached, and singled out same-day options trading as gambling.
According to the interview, U.S. equities have kept hitting fresh highs this year despite the energy shock linked to the Iran-Israel conflict. AI infrastructure names have been described as excessively speculative, while retail money has poured into names such as Micron Technology and SpaceX.
Buffett said meaningful investment opportunities are not common and require patience and discipline. “Sometimes opportunities come so fast you can’t grab them, but at other times you’re lucky if you find one every few years. Because human beings love gambling so much, there’s more money in cultivating gamblers than in cultivating investors.”
Buffett says he personally pushed the Google investment
Buffett said Berkshire Hathaway’s recent large investment in Google was pushed by him personally, not by CEO successor Greg Abel. He added, “I won’t do anything he doesn’t approve of, and he won’t do anything I don’t approve of. He is the ultimate decision-maker.”
Berkshire has continued adding to its Google position since the third quarter of 2025, and earlier this year also took part in its $10 billion private placement, according to the interview.
Buffett said, “The trick in investing is to find businesses that can earn high returns on capital for a very long time,” and acknowledged that he “made a mistake” by not buying Google earlier.
He said that by 2018 he had already seen the success of Google’s advertising business through Geico, but at the time was not sure the company would prove to be a long-term winner.
Even so, Buffett said Google is not among his favorite holdings. “I don’t like it as much as at least four or five other businesses we own.” He also said the hundreds of billions of dollars being committed to artificial intelligence are a central issue facing Google and all of its competitors: “When they used to develop software, they were not playing this kind of game.”
Calls Kevin Warsh “a pretty good option”
On new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, Buffett said he is “a pretty good option.”
The interview said Warsh showed his policy style at his first meeting in June, keeping rates unchanged while proposing adjustments to the central bank’s policy framework. In congressional testimony, he also pledged to push the Fed to “change direction” and focus on inflation.
Buffett said, “I think he will do his best to carry out the task he has been given, which is to achieve the 2% inflation target while maintaining maximum employment. He can’t do it perfectly, just as I know I can’t manage other people’s money perfectly and keep producing excess returns. Warsh cares about this country. That does not mean his decisions will always be right, but sometimes these decisions are simply very hard to make.”